2025 CFB Preseason Bets- Part 10
This is the last installment in my college football preseason bets series. Today I’ll cover a few bets that I’ve made since the last installment in early July.
Tulane to win the American +390 (1 unit)
Tulane was the best team in the American last year but lost a close one in the conference title game to Army. The Green Wave lost stud freshman QB Darian Mensah to Duke, but have a number of intriguing options to replace him including former BYU QB Jake Retzlaff. The Green Wave have a solid all-around roster that includes the best offensive line and best defensive line in the league. They’re quite a bit better than the rest of the conference, and while they are the favorites to win the league, they should be even bigger favorites.
LSU to win 5 or fewer games +1200 (1 unit)
DraftKings recently added a new section to their website with some alternate win totals, and the rest of the bets in this post will come from that section.
Every year, there is one preseason top 10 team who massively disappoints. I think that LSU is the most likely candidate this year- I’m a bit surprised that they’re a consensus top 10 team in most preseason polls. They also have a brutal early schedule that features games against Clemson, Florida and Ole Miss before the end of September. If LSU stumbles out of the gate I could see a repeat of the 2024 Florida State situation where everything goes wrong. Brian Kelly’s seat is also getting warm, and if he gets fired after a bad start, the team will stop caring.
North Carolina to win 3 or fewer games +1600 (0.5 units)
A lot of people have asked me for my opinion on North Carolina prior to Bill Belichick’s debut season in Chapel Hill. The boring answer is that I don’t really have one- the average simulation shows his squad at 6.6 wins, pretty in line with the consensus.
I do, however, want to buy some volatility on UNC. Most teams that I project for 6.6 wins will comfortably finish with 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 wins. However, UNC is not a typical team- there is some chance that this experiment goes really well, and some chance it goes really poorly. The call wing on UNC is pretty juiced from heavy retail interest, but I think that the put wing is attractive.
Texas to win 6 or fewer games +2000 (0.5 units)
I’m selling Texas at every opportunity this year. Texas is at the top of the preseason AP poll, but in the back half of the top 10 in my model.
I think that this is one of my favorite ways to gain some short exposure to the Longhorns. Texas has a brutal schedule- a full SEC slate and a trip to Ohio State in non-conference play. They also have absolutely zero QB depth behind Arch Manning- if he goes down with an injury, things can fall apart in a hurry.
Ole Miss to win 5 or fewer games +1100 (0.5 units)
2024 was Ole Miss’ window to compete for the SEC. Nearly everyone, most notably Jaxson Dart, is gone from last year’s team. They also were a year ahead on the portal, and now everyone else has caught up and their edge there is gone.
Ole Miss has once again gone portal-heavy this year, which is a pretty high variance strategy. Lane Kiffin does have a great track record in the portal, but with a portal-heavy roster, if things go south, they can go really far south. The schedule is brutal and I think a total crash-out is not impossible.